Hey guys, couple of quick things I'd like to bring up. First of all, I would just like to briefly promote my 'Tales from Abridgement' series that I'll be doing, it's basically a series of fun (hopefully) little original stories that take place in between series's, and where I'll be putting in place a trial run for characters yet to be introduced. Hopefully you like that.
Secondly, as you may remember, when I did Season 3, I took a brief break after the thirteenth episode, or the halfway mark, to focus on other stuff for a bit. I'll be doing that again, either with the actual thirteenth episode or with Gallant Old Engine, which is the fourteenth and would round things off nicely, in a way.
Following on from that, during that time, fingers crossed you'll see the release of the second episode of TUGS Abridged, a project that I clearly needed more time to plan for and not just do it on a whim.
Finally, I just want to quickly answer one of the reviews, a thanks to MK Inst for reviewing it and giving me such lovely feedback. I'm glad that someone noticed the 'Beetle' reference, I figured that I needed some sort of conflict considering that I might be winding down the political sub-plot a bit, and the Ministry of Defense engine provides a nice segue into the Duck storyline as well!
The styles are very different, I'm happy you picked up on that! And don't worry, going back and re-reading some of my old chapters are a bit painful for me, too. There's definitely a great deal more difference between them, not just with narrators, with the way the music is created, the look of the sets, the brighter colors, and the lighter stories as well. I hope you enjoy both abridging and my own crummy plot! XD.
CUE THE THEME!,
...
The engines came home that night to witness a screaming match.
Thomas and Edward stood there, opposite sides of the turntable, glaring at each other. Thomas was clearly gearing himself up for another daytime television intro, where he was probably going to chatted up by cheerful presenters and he'd say a couple of lines to make the audience laugh. No one was laughing at the moment.
"Look, I don't understand how this is so hard for you! Just drop Drampf as your ally, and start backing Bedella! I don't know if you've noticed, Thomas, but our approval ratings are dropping hour by hour! Not helped, it must be noted, by the fact that our budget just recently came back-"
"We have a budget?!" Percy gasped. Everyone shot a glare at him.
"-And we've currently spent more than 45% of it on funding ridiculous TV advertisements that would probably border on slander if it wasn't for the fact that the only people we could sell it to was the Adult channels! We need to cut our losses, and admit that we can't do this."
"See, that's the problem with you, Edward!" Thomas puffed back and forth in his berth "In the old days, you would have been the one who encouraged me to go out there and do some good! There's a legitimate chance that I could win this and-"
"Don't give me that claptrap, Thomas! It's not about helping enginekind, or improving relations between humans and engines. Oh no, it's just you trying to take back the spotlight again!"
"At least I've HAD the spotlight! Don't tell me you haven't loved the fact that you've been getting some actual attention for once! I mean, aside from being the blue one who isn't the star or the really arrogant one who still manages to get all of the girls, which is obviously something that you've never experienced."
There was dead silence for two minutes.
"Right." Edward hissed. "That's it. I quit. You're on your own from here on out, you little shit. For the record, if any of you want to find me, don't. But if you insist on doing so, I'll either be at Wellsworth or at the Sidings." He stormed off. Backwards.
Everyone glared at Thomas. Save for James, who glared at himself in the mirror's reflection, and Gordon, who looked at Edward's retreating face with concern.
"Oh please! It'll last a day. Two tops. As if he'd abandon us."
...
A week, a scandal involving a innocuous attempt to get free paintwork cleaning that ended up racking hundreds of pounds that was owed to a escort company and an accidental fire at Haultraugh later, Thomas began to realize that maybe he had been a little hasty towards Edward.
...
Skarloey the little engine-
"OI! None of that, boyo!"
-God, engines today, eh? Anyway, he enjoys all the sights and sounds along his line and knows them very well. He knows the sound of the cuckoo that awakens many of the people who live in Upper Rheneas, and the sound of the honking horn of Mr Drampf, who regularly calls the Refreshment Lady in front of him a variety of slurs that would make Stormfront itself feel embarrassed. He knows the lake...very well, as has been discussed before, and the way that the viaduct's line still feels shaky even after all these years.
However, he did notice something a little different, as he passed alongside Cros-ny-Cruin and noticed that there seemed to be actual activity going on, and again as he passed Neptune Refreshments, and saw that no one was trying to kill each other to get out of the way of the Refreshment Lady's cooking. Though Angelis and Asquith were still fighting somewhat.
On this particular morning, not long after his return, he found himself enjoying himself more than ever before, revisiting all the old sights as he went about his business. Along the way, he met Rusty, who was busy doing a little bit of work along the track. Well, the workmen were doing that, Rusty's main contribution was annoying them by remarking at intervals "You missed that bit there. Ooh, and that bit" which made the workmen very cross.
"OI! SHOVE OFF!"
Very cross may be a understatement.
"Don't mind them." Skarloey remarked, as his fireman shared sandwich with Rusty's crew. "They're quarry workers by trade, and we all know what happens in a quarry, don't we?"
"You get idiots like Duncan." Rusty rolled their eyes. "Yes, I know."
"You know-" Skarloey continued, to get both of their minds off the workmen and their rudeness "-if I couldn't see these familiar sights and places, see, I'd think I was on a different railway. And then I come along and find out that I've got to pull the same bunch of rowdy and sarcastic passengers who say that this is a bad railway at the drop of a hat, and then I realize that no. Still the same one. But my point is, bach, you've done wonders with these rails!"
"Oh stop it." Rusty grinned despite an attempt not to. Skarloey was the only one who actually talked to the diesel at the moment, what with Sir Handel and Duncan being Sir Handel and Duncan, and Peter Sam still desperately trying not to heave every time he rolled forward a inch. "I'm glad you're pleased though. Manager said that we should mend the track so well that Skarloey'll have no idea where he is. I think the idea was that they were hoping you'd crash into the new lake and give them a excuse to finally name it after something."
"Ha! Fat chance of that!"
"And so we did, and you didn't, if you get my meaning!"
Both headed off, with Skarloey reminding himself once again of how much he liked working with Rusty.
As they rounded the bend to Crovan's Gate, Rusty continued. "There's still one bad bit that's being a pain in the arse to smooth over. Just before the first station at Cros-ny-Cruin."
"Oh crikey, not 'Atlas's Fall'?!"
"Why is it called that?"
"Oh, far as I know, some Mid-Sodor Engine called Atlas had a accident there this one time. It's not really as bad as it sounds, but it's a nightmare trying to get the breakdown train over there, let me tell you."
"Don't I know it. An engine might come off there."
"Duncan?"
"Duncan. Especially if he insists on doing that ridiculous rock and roll stuff he keeps going on about."
"Look at him right now."
As if by magic or by the power of convenience, Duncan rolled in, bouncing up and down the line like he was attached to a bungee cord. He looked bad tempered, as per usual, and sneered contemptuously at whoever looked at him.
"Shouldn't like to be his passengers." Rusty remarked quietly. Duncan heard the sound of conversation and like any paranoid and rude idiot, assumed it was about him and immediately fronted up to the diesel.
"Whut about me?!" He demanded. "Ah'm a plain speakin engine and ah believe in plain speaking! Whut's all this about me?!" His Scottish accent had grown very erratic over the course of the week since his incident in the tunnel. Rusty quickly outlined the details that Skarloey had just heard about the bad stretch of line, and warned Duncan to be careful. Duncan looked at him critically for a minute, and then laughed coarsely. "Huh! Ah know mah way aboot! Ah don't need smelly diesels to tell me whut ta do!" And he rocked off, muttering under his breath that Rusty should head back to where someone actually wanted busy bodies like him.
Rusty was hurt.
"Never mind." Skarloey tried to soothe the troubled waters. "You tried. Come on bach, let's go get a nice drink or two. Edward's sure to have some stupid stories we can lose ourselves in for a hour."
...
"What's going on, Oliver?"
The Great Western engine looked around in sheer panic at Percy. "It's the trucks! They're not listening to a word I'm saying, and they're refusing to do anything that I tell them to! And they've started singing!"
"Oliver's no use at all!
Thinks he's very clever!
Says that he can manage us!
That's the best joke ever!"
"You'd swear the trucks only know one song." Percy remarked to himself. He looked at the trucks. "Shut up!" They ignored him, of course, and he turned to Oliver grimly. "Look, this is probably just a brief thing. Just show that you're not affected by it, and you'll do fine."
"They've been acting like this all week! Only reason I haven't told you before is because you never come down the line recently, and Edward's refusing to come and take the empties to and from Tidmouth Hault."
"Yes, well, we'll handle the Edward situation. Meanwhile, you keep on working on mastering your fear, or whatever." Percy jumped as James rushed past with a group of coaches towards Crovan's Gate.
...
Meanwhile, Duncan had tried to get to the bar himself, only to be shang-haied by the Fat Controller and ordered back to do work. He grumbled loudly, banging about the yard as he collected his coaches, before clattering away, muttering words that should never pass the mouth of engines or humans, towards the station.
James, having just arrived but putting on a act like he had been made to wait for ages, glared at the little yellow engine. "You're late!" He snapped.
"AH KNOW!" growled Duncan, rolling his eyes. "Och, but there's this smelly little arse of a diesel! Rusty's trying ta teach me how to stay on the rails, and then goes off leaving me ta find mah own coaches! The nerve! As if ah haven't been working like a horse furr years!"
James was sympathetic, seeing in this engine the same potential that Gordon had saw in Sir Handel. "You poor engine. We had a issue with shunting once! Silly little fools that did it didn't want to any more! We put a stop to that!" It never hurt to bend the truth a little, James thought, and the fact that he himself had had to put this train together would only diminish the amount of respect Duncan felt towards him "Oh, and diesels! Don't get me started on them! One of them idled up in our yard, and started telling us what to do! I soon sent him packing, of course, you've got to be firm with them, or they'll never learn!"
Duncan was filled with admiration. Duke, muttering about how in his day tank engines weren't seen much and heard even less, clattered by, but even his dismissive attitude failed to dampen Duncan's newfound respect for James. He didn't know, of course, that James was boasting and a complete liar into the package. As this was his first time meeting him, he can be excused somewhat.
As Duncan left the station, BoCo idled up, glaring at James. The latter immediately went into damage recovery mode on his attitude, and was only forgiven once the diesel had chased him across the island for the next two hours or so.
"Send Rusty packin! Send Rusty packin!" cackled Duncan as he clanked and rolled along the track. Sir Handel whistled in appreciation of this, and this made Duncan reach a level of smug confidence that had been unknown to man or engine before.
He climbed the hill, known as Alfred's Lament due to a rather awkward scene where Atlas's brother began singing Atlas's favorite hymn to mourn his brother only to discover that he was, at worst, badly bruised, with a furious nature.
"Well done boy!" said his driver, like a man who owned a rabid dog tempting said dog with treats "Keep it up!"
"Suck on tha, Rusty!" Duncan shouted triumphantly. Soon they were near the first station, and so confident was Duncan that he immediately began to sway side from side once again. "Nothing's happened, nothing's happened, silly old diesel, clever me!"
It will not surprise you in the slightest what happened next.
"Steady boy!"
Too late. With a wrenching sound, the rail seemed to split in two, and Duncan rocked over the side of the track, hitting the wall hard and knocking him out of his cheerful mood and into one of realization.
"BY THE BAGPIPES OF MACTOUT! Ah'm off!"
And he was. For the blind people out there.
...
"Sorry, Skarloey. Edward's gone off the radar for a wee bit. Odd that. Enjoy yer drinks, by the way." Douglas puffed off, leaving both Rusty and Skarloey to ponder life and all that it had to offer.
And then the news came via a very out of puff guard. "I warned him!" proclaimed Rusty triumphantly, as Duck rushed past carrying the consignment of milk for the schools. "I told him! But would he listen? Would he heck?! All he did was call me names, the little racist!" The little diesel was righteously enraged, and refused to move, on principle.
Skarloey, for all his faults (A tendency to drown himself in liquor and constantly struggling to tell his brother apart from cardboard being just some of many) was a engine who didn't like the idea of leaving a engine behind. "I'm ashamed of you, Rusty." He said, intoning deeply with his grave Welsh voice that he only used on special occasions, such as the time when Rheneas had stolen the last cream cake. "Think of the passengers! What'll they do?"
"Oh, my, you're right." Rusty felt embarrassed for the momentary slip into vindictiveness and Sir Handel-like behavior. "We must help them...I suppose Duncan as well."
"Atta bo- Atta gi-...Atta diesel? Close enough." Rusty roared into life, and Skarloey watched them rush off into action. He took a long sip of his cocktail and spat it out. Ah, of course, he reflected grimly. Douglas was no cocktail maker, and instead had clearly used soap in the product.
When Rusty arrived, the passengers gathered around him, murmuring as they watched Duncan wail and complain. He wasn't rocking and rolling now. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call irony. "Oh dear! Everrrryone will know how silly ah am!"
"Bit late for that, they already do!" Rusty called, and Duncan's day got worse. The passengers had to get out and help, and while they weren't pleased about that (As they expounded at length about to Sir Topham) they did their best, and at last, Duncan was jiggled back onto the track.
After that, aside from a incident where Duncan hit a deer on the way back to the sheds, he was extra careful all day. At last, evening came, and he hurried back to meet Rusty.
"Er...thanks." He started awkwardly. Start as you mean to go on, as they say. "Rrrrusty, thanks for helping me! Ah'm sorry ah was rude ta ye!"
"It's fine, Duncan." Rusty said, politely. "But you're buying me drinks for the next few years."
Duncan grit his teeth. Even a plain speaking engine saw that speaking plainly now would be hazardous to his health. "Ah wish all diesels were like ye! Let's be friends." He figured having a chum who knew how to work the line was good form.
"Suits me." said Rusty casually. "Bad bit of line's getting repaired tomorrow, now do move, because that's where Peter Sam is sleeping."
Duncan grit his teeth, and headed off in search of a warmer place to sleep. As he did so, the first specks of snow began to appear. The Island's infamous weather had decided to kick in once again.
...
Elsewhere, Duck had delivered his milk tankers, and was now looking to head on home to catch a bit of kip before convincing Edward to come home. Wherever he was.
However, his route home was rudely interrupted by the distant sound of humming as he approached the turn off point to the Anopha Quarry. It was the humming of something- or someone, Duck mentally added in his head- that required a great deal of power to run. Remembering the information passed onto him by Jinty and Pug, Duck hesitated for a moment, and then quickly backed down the track.
He found a nice line of trucks just near one of the rock cliffs, and waited.
Drampf was there, his hair looking wild and disheveled. He strode back and forth muttering things that Duck couldn't exactly hear, but didn't sound complimentary towards any minorities. At last, he spoke up "-AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF, YOU TELL ME IT'S GOING TO TAKE ANOTHER THREE WEEKS!"
"Calm yourself, Mr Drampf." The voice was that of a refined English persuasion. It sounded as though it had been rehearsed a number of times before a mirror, as it contained only the most Renounced of Renounced Pronunciation "You are doing far better than that silly little blue tanker can ever hope to achieve."
"Aye! But Bedella is still ahead in the polls! I don't get it, it's almost like insulting and suggesting that we need to get certain people out of the country is costing me votes!"
"I shall pass no comment, save that the political drama serves as a perfect distraction for us to carry out the real plan."
Duck couldn't see, but he was pretty sure that the humming was coming from the strange voice's person. And then suddenly, he spotted him. The Beetle.
He was small, squat, with a face that looked perpetually bored. For an engine who had fallen off the radar so long ago, he looked in amazingly good shape, mustache neatly clipped, teeth whitened and his paintwork, that of dark beige with hazard signs painted around his buffers, looked as though it hadn't faded in the slightest. Whoever this fellow is, Duck reasoned, he has been kept in largely good shape.
"That's as maybe, but it's still embarrassing! You don't have to deal with the pain of it! The humiliation of having to spend your time with lesser beings who come onto this island and feed off it like parasites!"
"No, I just had to spend my time stealing enough electricity to live, and occasionally going completely insane whilst trying to actually find said electricity." Beetle muttered.
"Oh, shut it, Beetle!"
it happened in a instant. One moment the former Ministry of Defense engine was sitting there, doing little. The next, he had somehow managed to bring Drampf to his knees, his buffers crackling with blue electricity and his face contorted in a horrible snarl. "My name, you toad, is Davidson! Don't you DARE call me that name again, Drampf! You sniveling little coward! While you were out there, running away and crying to mother while the real men did all the fighting, I was doing actual work! I was carrying dangerous work that no man alive could ever dream about, work that would have been vital to ending the threat of war permanently! But no, the Ministry didn't like my findings, of course they didn't! I was just the lackey, the muscle, the hired hands, their little BEETLE!" The blue electricity crackled, and for a horrid moment, Duck was torn between the safety of his hiding place, or his natural need to stop Drampf from dying.
"P-P-Please!"
"A little shock to the system ought to cure you of your manners, little man!"
"As amusing as that may be, Davidson, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to put that idiot down."
Duck shuddered instinctively, as the cold air got even colder. The faint and shadowy figure of a very familiar German Federal Railways 80 class 0-6-0 tank engine rolled forward, close to Beetle, or Davidson, or whatever he called himself.
"...As you wish, chum. But remember this, Drampf, you do anything like that again-"
"I WONT'!" gibbered Drampf, and hurried off before you could say "Lickity split" three times fast.
"Now then-" Marklin smiled. A truly chilling sight "-let's talk shop, shall we? Let's talk about how it is that you're going to kill Thomas the Tank Engine."
TO. BE. CONTINUED.